The North Transformed
PAGES 390-395
Objectives

Explain why American cities few in the 1800s

List the new inventions and advances in agriculture and
manufacturing

Describe the improvements in transportation during the early 1800s

Discuss the wave of immigration to the United States in the 1840s
and 1850s

Describe the problems African Americans faced in the North
Focus Question

How did urbanization, technology, and social change
affect the North?
Northern Cities in the late 1700s

New York City in 1790: a little
more than 33,000 people

New York City in 2013: 8.406 million
people

Lower Moreland Township in 2015:
12,982 people
What happened in the 1800s to help
draw people to the Northern cities?

The Industrial Revolution!
What is urbanization?

The growth of cities due to movement of
people from rural areas to cities

More factories were being built and
farmers were attracted to the new types
of work available in the cities

Cities became crowded, so people
moved west

Pittsburgh, PA had 23,000 people by
1840

Louisville, KY had 43,000 people by 1850
(larger than Washington, D.C. at the
time)
What are some problems of growing
cities?

Filthy streets

Absence of good sewage systems

Lack of clean drinking water
(disease easily spread)

Citywide fires were common (most
structures were made of wood)

Volunteer firefighters were poorly
trained
What is a telegraph?

A device that used electrical
signals to send messages quickly
over long distances

What is Morse Code?

Each letter of the alphabet is
represented by its own mix of short
signals (“dots”) and long signals
(“dashes”)
What were the benefits of Morse
Code?

Samuel Morse tested his system: he
was able to wire a message from
Washington, D.C. to Baltimore

Became a part of American life

Thousands of wires were strung across
the nation

Factories in the East could
communicate with markets in the West
in a matter of hours instead of weeks
What sort of advances were made in
agriculture?

Mechanical Reaper – could harvest
crops with fewer workers

Threshers – separated grains of wheat
from stalks

Mechanical Reaper and Thresher
became one machine called the
combine

How did advances in agriculture affect
industry?

Farm laborers who had been replaced
by machines went into the cities to
work
What were some advances in
manufacturing?


Sewing machines

Clothes became less expensive

Everyone could dress as well as
wealthier Americans
New England and the Middle
Atlantic states were producing
most of the nation’s manufactured
goods
Improvements in Transportation: Water

Steamboats (steam engine to
power a boat)

Ideal for travelling on rivers and
not oceans

Clipper Ships (world’s fastest ship long and slender with tall masts
meant for ocean travel)

1850s – Great Britain produced
ironclad steamships that could
carry more cargo
Improvements in Transportation: Land

America’s first railroad: Baltimore
to Ohio – pulled on track by horses

1830: first American-made steam
locomotive

1840: about 3,000 miles of railway
track had been built in the U.S.
Why were railroads a better means of
transportation than steamboats?

Unlike steamboats, railroads could
be built almost anywhere and
travel in any season
New Wave of Immigrants

Ireland: 1845, a fungus destroyed the
potato crop leading to famine – a
million people starved to death, a
million more left Ireland


Came to the U.S., employed in lowly
jobs, like putting down railroad tracks
Germany: revolutions against harsh
rulers failed, fled to the U.S.

Unlike Irish, German immigrants came
from many different levels of society
What was the American reaction
toward immigrants?

Some worried about the growing
foreign population

Nativists – people who wanted to
preserve the country for white,
American born Protestants


Especially opposed the Irish
because most were Catholic
One groups of nativists in New York
formed a secret group

When asked about it, members
replied, “I know nothing.”

The Know-Nothings became a
political party
African Americans in the North

Faced discrimination – the denial of
equal rights or equal treatment

Slavery had ended in the North by the
early 1800s, but still were not treated
equally

Could not vote

Not allowed to work in factories or
skilled trades

Employers preferred to higher white
immigrants over African Americans

Segregation in schools/public facilities,
even churches

Newspapers portrayed them as inferior
How did African Americans respond to
discrimination?

They started their own
churches and publications
Focus Question Re-visited

How did urbanization, technology, and social change affect the
North?

With the arrival of new waves of immigrants and the growth of
industry, northern cities grew, as did the differences between the
North and South
The Plantation South
PAGES 396-400
Objectives

Explain the significance of cotton and the cotton gin to
the South

Describe what life was like for free and enslaved
African Americans in the South
Focus Question

How did cotton affect the social and economic life of
the South?
The Cotton Kingdom

The Cotton Gin: used a
spiked cylinder to remove
seeds from cotton fibers

Before the Cotton Gin, the
seeds had to be picked by
hand – a laborer could only
clean a pound of cotton a day
Slave Labor

To grow more cotton, planters used
more slave labor

The price of slaves increased

Cotton became the greatest source of
wealth for the United States

Society was dominated by large
plantation owners – they were a small
and wealthy class

However, more than half of southern
farmers did NOT have slaves
Why was there an increased demand
for cotton?

The Industrial Revolution led
to a growth in textiles, which
in turn demanded more
cotton
Defending Slavery

Most southern whites accepted
the system of slavery

Northerners were pushing to
abolish it

In response, southern whites
hardened their support for slavery

Supporters stated that it was more
humane than the free labor system
of the North

Unlike northern factory workers,
they argued, enslaved African
Americans did not worry about
unemployment
Why did most southern white people support
slavery even though many of them did not own
slaves?

Many feared slave uprisings and
violence

Felt superior to enslaved people

Resented the interference of the North

Believed that enslaved workers were
better off than northern factory
workers
Critics of Slavery

Argued that northern workers were
free to quit a job and take another
if conditions became too harsh

Argued that people held in slavery
often suffered physical or other
abuse from white owners

Argued there was no satisfactory
substitute for freedom
Restrictions on Free African Americans
in the South

By law, excluded from all but lowly
jobs

Children could not attend public
schools

Could not vote, serve on juries, or
testify against white defendants in
court

Freedom was never secure: slave
catchers often kidnapped them
and sold them back into slavery
In spite of the restrictions placed upon
them…

…African Americans made valuable
contributions to southern life:

Norbert Rillieux revolutionized the
sugar industry


His method of refining sugar was much
faster, safer, and less costly
Henry Blair developed a seed-planting
device that saved time
Life Under Slavery

Slave codes: controlled every
aspect of life

“a slave by our code is not treated
as a person but as a …thing…”

Became skilled workers – vast
majority did heavy farm labor

Became trusted house servants

Many forms of punishment – most
often a whipping

One real protection against
mistreatment: owners looked on
them as valuable property that
they needed to keep healthy and
productive

Many slave families were broken
apart when slave owners sold one
or more of their family members
Why do you think slave codes made it
illegal to teach enslaved workers?

Owners felt they had more
control if slaves were illiterate
Why do you think there were so many
restrictions on free blacks in the South?

White southerners did not want
free African Americans to have
equal rights because white people
wanted to stay in power
How did life for free blacks in the South compare
with life for free blacks in the North?

Some free blacks in the North went
to school

No free blacks in the South could
vote or go to school

Free blacks in the North, like free
blacks in the South, faced
discrimination in employment
Finding hope in the Bible

Many African Americans found a
message of hope in the Bible

African Americans composed
spirituals, or religious folk songs
that blended biblical themes with
the realities of slavery
Resistance to Slavery

Some worked slowly

Some pretended to not understand
what they were told to do

Some deliberately broke farm
equipment

Some fled north to freedom

Resistance sometimes became
rebellion: Nat Turner led the most
famous slave revolt in 1831 (he and
others killed 60 whites)

Innocent African Americans were killed
in response
Focus Question re-visited

How did cotton affect the social
and economic life of the South?

The invention of the cotton gin
made growing cotton more
profitable, resulting in a need for
more workers and increasing the
South’s dependence on slavery